Have you ever had a conversation with someone in which they use psychologically and spiritually dysfunctional ways of relating, leaving you feeling more emotional pain and perhaps even a sense of darkness during and after the conversation? Please understand, when I use the word “dysfunctional,” I intend no judgment, just an observation that a person is speaking and relating in ways that are known to create further pain, illusion, and even force the other to respond certain ways. Generally, whenever force is applied, darkness is present, if only the darkness of fear.

Often, we spiritual people are unaware of our pain. Sometimes, spiritual people project pain and fears onto others. If we are doing that, there is usually a karmic kickback. I recently had a conversation which felt very painful to me as I experienced the other person, through good intentions of thinking she was seeing pain in me and intending to help me heal it, seeking to define “truth” for both of us, while also projecting her own pain onto me and using spiritual principles against me rather than employing them on herself.

I make no claim to be perfect, and as a matter of fact, I caved into this person’s view of reality, for I am virtually always willing to work on myself and that is what I intended to do, although I did it from a place of weakness rather than a place of strength.

As a result, after the conversation, I was left with a sense of great pain and darkness for at least 24 hours. A few weeks ago, I had this same experience of intense, lingering pain and darkness after a previous conversation with this same person. Both times, I knew intuitively that the huge aura of pain I felt was hers, not so much my own. As it turns out, this person’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and her sense of victim-hood about this became apparent to me in her way of acting with me.

What does one do and how does one heal enormous emotional pain and even darkness that one feels came into one’s aura from someone else? I had experienced this twice with her. Both times, I had to practice multiple spiritual disciplines and ask Archangel Michael to detach the energy from me. This time, it was not enough.

What finally worked for me was to address the pain and darkness directly and say, “You are not my pain. You are not my darkness. I command you to leave me.”

It worked.

What a relief!

The other spiritual insight that worked to heal my pain came to me during meditation. What came to me was this affirmation: I AM the Loving Presence that heals all pain.

My sense was that I had started the conversation with that energy of presence, but that I had begun to see myself as separate from it as I began to buy into the other person’s view that I was broken and in pain and therefore causing other people pain, while she was not also taking responsibility for her own pain and its consequences.

How beautiful it would have been if we had both focused on the light within each other. As a matter of fact, in the middle of the conversation, I chose to look for the positive, that is, the Light, within her, and I was able to see some. That felt really good, but without her reciprocating this process, the conversation remained dysfunctional and forced.

The next day, during my time of meditation, I had also been guided to see multiple things I could have said differently to stay in a place of truth and love and light, and even to have ended the conversation multiple ways for multiple reasons. If someone is refusing to see the light in us, and focusing instead on their perception of what is “broken” or “wrong” or needing healing in us, then they are focusing on the illusory darkness, not our real soul self.

If someone is insisting on trying to define reality for us, or if they are not open to listening and accepting our understanding of the Light within is, then we have every right, and I would add, even a responsibility, to end the conversation with them.

Focusing on the darkness does not heal. Focusing on darkness and pain just magnifies the pain and darkness and keeps us there. Darkness cannot heal darkness. Only light can dispel darkness.

Focusing on the light and love begets more light and love. Focusing on and looking for the light and love within what seems dark and painful can lead us to finding the love and light even in the midst of darkness.

For instance, if someone we know does something, says something, or behaves in a way that we perceive as really hurtful to us or to someone else or to both of us, then one way we might react would be to make assumptions about what they did and project our understanding of what they did and why they did it and what they “should have done instead” onto them and the situation.

But if we make assumptions about their motives and project our own understanding of their motives onto them from our own place of pain, then all we do is to create more darkness and pain by seeking to project our own truth onto someone else and insisting that it is “the truth.”

However, the only way to bring light and love into a situation of pain and the darkness of unknowing is to seek to find out the other person’s truth, and to honor it by looking for their intentions to see what good they were intending. Only by uncovering the light within others do we help them move away from intentions that, while well-meaning, only created greater pain and darkness for others. By focusing on the light and love within them, and by listening for the light within them, we can help grow the light by affirming the light in all of us.

Affirming light and love is healing. By contrast, projecting pain and hurtful intentions onto others creates more pain and hides the light of truth by not actually listening to the other person’s truth.

Ultimately, by listening to the other person’s sense of truth and sharing our truth as equal, but neither one dominating, helps us move to truth and light together, if we both take responsibility for how our truth led us to act or speak in ways that hurt the other. This is love and light: seeking honesty and looking for the light in both people while also both being honest about our own pain and taking responsibility for it.

In the meantime, if we end up feeling as though we have absorbed someone else’s pain and dark energy into our aura, I recommend telling that pain and darkness that it is not yours and commanding it to leave you. If that is not enough, working with Archangel Michael can help.

If you need further help, I am available in person and by phone or Facetime for distance sessions. For more information, please go to:

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About selfrealizationtherapy

I am an energy healer, intuitive life coach, author, meditation teacher, and inspirational speaker. While I am ordained in the Christian tradition, I have also studied Eastern spiritual disciplines and practices, including Raja Yoga Meditation; Intuitive Coaching; Reiki; Falun Gong; and other forms of energy healing for both people and animals. I am available for distance healing and spiritual coaching via phone, Skype, or Facetime; please email me at: carol.dodson.richardson@gmail.com to schedule a session.
On Thursday, May 27, 2010, I experienced what I call an Enlightenment Vision, in which I ascended and was blessed by Ascended Masters of many faiths: Master Lao Tzu, Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Paramahansa Yogananda, High Priest Melchizedek, Lady Kwan Yin, Master Usui, and then by the Seven Archangels of the Seven Rays.
After this vision, the teachings in Higher Consciousness began. Apparently, my crown chakra was opened, and direct contact with the Ascended Masters has been possible ever since. My message to everyone is: this is possible for you to achieve as well, although getting there is not necessarily quick or easy.
With a Master of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt University Divinity School, a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Texas Health Center at Houston, and a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Texas Christian University, my personal vision is to be a healer and guru-doula, empowering people to experience and to give birth to the divine within themselves, individually and in community.
Perceiving a unity in my readings in Eastern religions and in Biblical studies, I believe the original message of Jesus Christ was and is a call to Self-Realization, which may also be called following The Way. The Way, or the Tao consists of the practice of peace and love in every moment, honoring the Divine Presence within ourselves as well as within others. The Way of early Christianity was a spiritual practice which similarly focused not on the material world, but on the practice of Divine Presence within the earthly realm.
When we practice The Way, or The Tao, we become one with Divine Peace, Love, and even bliss. When we attain this, we experience the "Kingdom of God" or Reign of God, within ourselves, Nirvana or possibly Samadhi. Achieving this Way within each of ourselves is the only way we will be able to usher in the Reign of Divine presence among us all here on earth.
The ultimate goal of The Way, and of Self-Realization, is the attainment of unity with the Divine Consciousness, or Buddha-Consciousness orChrist-Consciousness, within, and beyond our normal mortal mind. This Unity-Consciousness is eternal, but begins in the here and now. May it be so.